Pretend play is also known as symbolic play or imaginative play.

To support your child with early pretending in play:

Use motivating toys, such as a favourite character toy.

Use a mix of toys and real items, for example feeding doll with a real banana.

Model familiar actions that your child will have experienced in their daily routine. For example, include a character toy in snack time or make teddy talk on the phone.

Model the action at the time of a daily routine to make it more meaningful for your child

Next, develop the pretend play by:

Introducing realistic toys, for example plastic food and tea set, doll’s house.

Model very simple single step pretend actions, for example teddy eating cake.

Repeating single step actions again and again

Make actions fun by adding exciting sounds and noises, e.g. “wee!” as Thomas the Tank Engine goes over the bridge.

Once your child is able to do some single step pretend play actions, extend this by modelling how to add actions to make a sequence of play, for example cut the cake then pretend to eat it, feed the teddy and put him to sleep.

Developing Pretend Play Skills